A Dozen Years Ago, Remigio Cornejo Jr. Did The Right Thing

During the holiday season, I ran into Remigio Cornejo Jr. It had been more than 12 years; for a moment, I didn't remember.

We talked--and at the end of a news year filled with sordidness and anger, he filled me with a renewed sense of hope and of the best possibilities of humankind.

It was in the summer of 1986 that I first met Mr. Cornejo. A woman from Glenview-- Mary Ann Nelson, 65--had made a trip to Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo with her daughter-in-law and two grandchildren. On the way home, they had stopped for lunch at a McDonald's near Wrigley Field.

As they had left the McDonald's, Mrs. Nelson had put her purse on the ground while she fastened the children's car seats. She drove away--forgetting her purse in the parking lot.

It wasn't until she got to Glenview that she realized the purse was missing. Personal identification, credit cards, her cash-- all in the purse.

She drove back to Chicago and started to go through trash cans near the McDonald's. She was hoping someone had found the purse, taken the money, and had dumped the purse with the rest of her possessions in a garbage can. But she had no luck.

While she was in Chicago looking through trash cans, the telephone rang at her home in Glenview. Her husband, David, answered.

The caller identified himself as a Remigio Cornejo Jr. He said he had taken one of his children to the McDonald's, and had found a purse in the parking lot. He had taken the purse home.

David Nelson drove from the suburbs into Chicago, and knocked on Remigio Cornejo's door. Cornejo had the purse; everything was intact--including all the cash.

Nelson wanted to give him a reward. "But he wouldn't have it," Nelson said. "He said he didn't want to take anything from me.

"As I got ready to leave with my wife's purse, I asked him again if there was anything I could do for him. He repeated that he didn't want a reward. But he went and got his resume for me. He said that he was out of work, and that he had a wife and four sons, and that if I could give his resume to anyone who might have a job for him, he would be very grateful."

Mr. and Mrs. Nelson passed the resume out to several business people, with no results. They got in touch with me because they thought this was so impressive--a man who was out of work and in need of money not only turning in the purse, but refusing a reward for it--that I might be able to do something about it.

I spoke with Remigio Cornejo that summer. "My youngest son and I were having lunch in the McDonald's," he said. "When we walked out of the restaurant, I had only 50 cent in my pocket. I saw the purse, and I picked it up, and I saw the money and the credit cards.

"This was the second time in two years that this had happened. The first time, I found another purse, and it had some medicine in it along with the other things. The label said that the woman had to drink the medicine three times a day, so I got it back to her in a hurry."

He said it would hurt his conscience to accept a monetary reward just for being honest, but that the one thing he had hoped was that something would come from giving his resume to the Nelsons. "I really need a job," he had said. "I am two months behind on the rent for my apartment."

He and I went over his resume. He was 41 years old; he said he had been born in the Philippines, and had graduated from a university there. He had worked for 11 years in the Philippines as a credit supervisor for a photocopy company. He had brought his family to the U.S. because "in the Philippines, we always were told that there was much opportunity in America."

He had had two jobs in the U.S., but had been out of work for several months. "I am not a big man," he said, "but I am good at clerical work, and I am familiar with working on computer terminals."

All I knew about him was that he was by all appearances an honest, good-hearted man who was willing to go out of his way to help others even when there was nothing in it for him. I told his story here in the column--how he didn't want charity, only a chance to work.

That was 12 years ago. When I ran into him over the holidays, he filled me in on what has happened since. That story will appear here on Tuesday. If you feel like being cheered up, it's worth coming back.